


Journey to the Golden King

by VioletBlue



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF!Gwen, Beating, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Non-Sexual Slavery, Physical Abuse, Platonic Relationships, Prisoner of War, Slave!Merlin, Slavery, Soldiers, hurt!elyan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2018-11-14 03:27:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11199507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletBlue/pseuds/VioletBlue
Summary: War has ravaged Albion. The magical army led by Lady Morgana clashed with the cruel, anti-magic forces of Lord Agravaine. Both sides suffered horribly, with dragons decimating villages and villagers drowning Druid children. Only Camelot survived the battle intact, and it is said that the Golden Land with its Golden King Arthur is the last remaining place of solace and hope, where wounds can be healed and lives remade.Among the refugees flocking to Camelot are the displaced Princess Gwen and her deathly ill brother Elyan, and a group of weary, hardened soldiers (Percival, Gwaine, and Leon) with their enslaved prisoner of war, the sorcerer Merlin.The journey is long, but the call of the king is the only hope.(Very) roughly based off of the dynamics in the episode 4.08 "Lamia."





	1. Prologue

Gwen woke suddenly, starting up from her makeshift bed of leaves. Instinctively, she reached for her brother’s hand in the darkness. It was covered in a sheen of sweat despite the chill of the night. She carefully turned Elyan’s slumped head towards her. He groaned faintly, his eyelashes fluttering restlessly and a small crease of pain in his forehead. No improvement then. She gently dripped some water into Elyan’s mouth, careful to conserve it, murmuring comfortingly though she wasn’t sure he could hear. 

She should sleep. Tomorrow’s trek would be harder than yesterday’s, a dangerous road filled with desperate men, and she needed to be alert enough for the both of them. 

Stars shone through the arching branches of the forest as she settled back onto her back. She had dreamed of the golden king again. The imagined face was always just a bit blurry, indistinct, but it always shone with a pure light. She would see the king in the flesh when her journey finally led her to the promised land. Camelot. The last good place. Where, they say, justice is not just a half-remembered dream, but reality. A golden land shining under a golden man. There was medicine there, master healers like Gaius the Great. And, perhaps even just as important, peace. Peace for a sick man to truly rest. Freedom from fear. Gwen smiled softly. It would all be worth it. 

Camelot and it’s golden king could save him. They would. She had come too far to lose him now. She would make her brother well. She fell asleep with the words on her lips, like a prayer. A prayer that echoed across the diseased realm, a prayer for salvation.

_Arthur Pendragon._


	2. Chapter 2

The next bump in the road elicited a large groan from Elyan, limp in the cart. 

“Sorry,” Gwen grunted. 

She heard a soft chuckle, the faint ghost of her brother’s old, hearty laugh.

“You should be,” he muttered.

Gwen bit her lip in a little grin. A fallen kingdom, a raging fever, a flight across the mountains, leave it to her little brother to be spending his labored breath teasing her.

It had been ten weeks since their kingdom had fallen, one week since Elyan had collapsed on the road, unable to hide his weakness from his big sister any longer. Their father, King Thomas of Deira, a small and remote mountain kingdom, had commanded them to flee, to return later to rebuild the kingdom after things had settled down. There had never been any magical/nonmagical conflict in their land… sorcerers were few and far between, and were mostly either ignored or treated with respect for their crafts. But in the last, final battles of the great war, Deira had been caught in the crossfires of the brutal armies, looted and pillaged by both sides equally, all sense of honor burnt out after years of fighting.

Her father had looked so small, silhouetted against the backdrop of his burning lands. Mutually assured destruction wasn’t enough for Morgana and Agravaine. With their endless war of hate and stubbornness, they needed to destroy everything and anything they saw. The war had ended only two months ago, and only because both sides had been so completely depleted and weakened that neither could go on, and the generals had killed each other in a final battle on Deiran land. The nonmagical side had technically claimed victory, but it was a poor victory indeed when there was nothing for the victors to do but gather themselves wearily off the ground and try to make it to Camelot before winter stole all chances of survival.

Go, go to Camelot, their father had said. And the Royal Siblings had gone, with nothing but their traveling cloaks and a sack of Deiran treasures and jewels that had steadily been depleted, traded for food and shelter and safe transport over the mountains. 

Come on, Ely, she silently urged. She would not let this journey be in vain. She would not.

A raucous laugh cut across the silence of her memory. She turned around to exchange a look with Elyan, but his eyes had closed, his chest rattling slightly with each breath.

She turned back to face the sounds, alone, a lump in her throat. There were voices, faint with distance, but still recognizably masculine voices all speaking over each other. She heard the whinny of a horse, too, and if she strained her ears, something splashing… whoever these men were, they had found a water source. Gwen needed, badly, to refill their water pouches. There was no avoiding these men, then.

It seemed her decision had been made for her.

“Wish us luck, Ely,” Gwen murmured to her sleeping brother. “Forgive me, but we need some help.”

The next bend of the trail revealed the camp. The brook looked clear and narrow, and there were the startings of a campfire next to it, with two tents already erected. She gathered her courage and bellowed a greeting.

There were three men. No, four. The first three, who were rapidly walking to her, were tall, muscular men with greasy hair, shields hung round their sides, and an air of cautious trepidation as the approached. Retired soldiers, probably, after the War’s end. As retired as soldiers ever got around here.

The last hung back by himself, his eyes on the ground. He was carrying a pack that was nearly as heavy and burdened as the horse he was leading. A servant then.

No, her eyes caught a gleam of black metal looped around his neck. A slave. An enslaved sorcerer. 

It was possible she had made the wrong call in flagging these men down.


	3. Chapter 3

“And you pulled that cart, by yourself, across the Deiran passes?” the biggest man grunted with something dangerously approaching amusement. The men had invited her back to their camp but had not sat down or relaxed their arms folded across their chest. They were gathered in a line facing the pair.

Gwen turned to the big man with daggers in her eyes, daring him to turn their struggles into a funny story to be told round a campfire.

“Elyan was able to walk until about a week ago, then I traded my mother’s necklace for a farmer’s cart and pulled him across the foothills. He needs medicine and care, more than I can give him. He will not reach Camelot in time if we travel alone.” She sent a silent prayer into the heavens that this was the right decision.

“But, I have money,” the princess’s voice was clear and almost commanding. “We can help each other, gentlemen. The road to Camelot is no easy journey, and unity is a precious thing in these lands. Come. Please,” she tried to meet the eyes of each man, the way she had back in court when trying to convince the royal advisors of something. “I can promise enough money to buy the finest bread and beer in any villages you come across, and something to start you off in Camelot besides.”

Gwen was very painfully aware that the men could rob her right now, and though she would fight tooth and nail, they would overpower her. She was taking a huge gamble. But she would not reach Camelot alone, dragging her brother’s body. If he was going to die out here, she would die by his side.

“And what do you want in return?” the dark-haired one asked her, eyeing her suspiciously.

“Protection,” she said, gesturing to their swords. “Food and water, so that I don’t have to stop to forage in unknown lands. Making fires and taking guard watches. And for you to hitch Elyan’s cart to one of your horses.” She paused to gauge the men's’ reactions. They were stone faced. She remembered, from the diplomatic training her father had forced her to attend as Crown Princess, that silence in negotiations was not a cause for panic. She bit her lip and rode it out.

Finally, the third man, somber-looking with a deep voice, spoke up. 

“How much?”

She turned to the cart and pulled out a small, gray bundle. There were half a dozen large gold coins, leftover from the sale of her coronation crown a few weeks back.

“I will pay for any expenses we incur on our way to Camelot, and when we arrive you may take the rest and split it amongst yourselves.”

The men looked at one another.

“We’ll do it,” the somber man said at last, nodding. “My name is Leon, and this is Gwaine, and Percival.” The dark-haired man and the big one raised their chins in turn, but none of them smiled.

“They can sleep with Merlin,” Gwaine said shortly, before turning away. “I don’t care if she tags along and I get a bit of gold out of it, but the tent is already too crowded. And I don’t want whatever he’s got.” He jerked his head dismissively towards Elyan’s limp form.

Anger flared in Gwen’s chest, but she tamped it down. Instead she said, blankly as she could, “Who is Merlin?”

Percival gave a loud laugh. She recognized it as the one she had heard earlier in the forest.

“Well, Your Highness,” said Percival, using the title with more derision than reverence as he started to set up camp, “we got a sorcerer scum than does our cooking and cleaning. Don’t worry, he’s a murdering Druid alright, but he’s not a danger to anyone with the state he’s in.”

Gwen turned to look at the sorcerer slave she had seen before. He was small, slender, with slightly shaggy black hair and eyes that darted up cautiously to meet hers. They were almost painfully blue. 

He did not look like a war criminal, or a dangerous murderer. She supposed looks could be deceiving. Still, she felt a pain in her chest to see where the collar had chafed his pale skin red. 

Slavery had been illegal for Deiran citizens, but she had seen many foreign embassies entertained in the royal drawing room with their silent slaves by their side.

Merlin’s lips tightened as he looked at Percival, but he just bowed his head and began unloading the horse. Gwen felt a rush of queasiness. She did not approve of slavers, but she wasn’t here to be comfortable. She was here to get her brother to safety.

She grabbed the handles of Elyan’s cart and, taking a deep breath, started to drag it over to the slave Merlin.


	4. Chapter 4

The day was almost over, and Gwen was incredibly tired. The worst of the foothills were behind her, but Elyan was worse, her blister had reopened, and she had made three unsavory new allies. 

Well, maybe four. 

The soldiers were set up near the river, their fire crackling and their banter loud. She could see the glint of the swords leaned up against their tent, and she didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse. 

Elyan, Gwen and the sorcerer slave were camped out about twenty feet away, huddled under a tree. Gwen had shared one of her blankets with Merlin when she discovered the young man only had a tattered piece of cloth to wrap around himself, even though the nights were quickly getting colder.

She couldn’t stop thinking about how he had thanked her with a surprised and genuine smile, the first one she’d seen in weeks. How strange that it had come from an enslaved sorcerer, not one of the supposedly victorious free soldiers gathered around that fire.

Merlin caught her eyes lingering on the black metal band encircling his throat. Gwen hastily glanced away, embarrassed, but Merlin only smiled wearily. 

“Controls my magic,” he answered her unasked question. “And me.” He took a large stick from the pile and prodded the embers until they shifted into a better formation to cook the skewered piece of meat. He had been ordered to make the men dinner.

“How?” she asked before she could stop herself. 

He shrugged. “The Lady Morgana invented it,” he said, his voice oddly devoid of bitterness. “When her methods became… more extreme… many Druids protested. Refused to follow her. Her sorcerers created these as a means of controlling the enemies they were earning and the prisoners they were gathering. It’s quite simple magic, really, it’s just that no one had ever thought to use it in such a way.” He paused to slide the meat to the other end of the skewer. Gwen looked at his hands, busy tending the fire, unable to look into his eyes. 

“It’s… a bit like a dam on a river. It stops the magic from coming out, blocks it all up. But, like all dams, a little bit has to be let out at a time or it’ll overflow. The thing is, that little bit is controlled - harnessed, I guess - by the master of the collar, not the wearer.”

“So it’s your own magic used against you. Does it alter your mind? Force you to do their bidding? Or swear allegiance?”

“Nothing as complicated as that,” Merlin said, with a smile quirking on his lips. “It’s just pain. My mind is still my own. Whoever controls the collar just has a particularly effective way of… urging me.”

Gwen couldn’t bring herself to return his smile across the fire. He was the only self-deprecating slave she had ever met.

“What would happen if it wasn’t let out? The magic, I mean?”

“I dunno,” Merlin said. “To be honest, nobody’s ever had much of a problem using the collar enough to keep the spell going.” He gave another wry smile. It seemed to be his default facial expression. “I didn’t have much of a formal magical education, so I’m guessing I’d either be freed from it’s power or die.”

There wasn’t much to say to that. Merlin eased the meat off the fire and began chopping it with a long, slender knife. She watched the flickers as drops of grease ran off of the stake and fell into the flames. 

“Thank you for telling me all that,” she said at last. “I know it’s probably easier not to think, or dwell, or… relive things, so I appreciate you taking the time to explain the full… situation to me.”

Merlin looked up from his task, his half-shadowed face unreadable. 

“Yes, well, none of them asked how it worked, they just discovered they could use it and ran with it,” he said. “So thank you for asking.” He gathered the pieces of meat into a basket. 

“And don’t worry about making me _think_ about it… I’m always thinking about it.” He pushed up into a standing position and headed off to the distant campfire to bring the men their meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well hello there. This is my first ever fic, after years of lurking, so I'd love feedback, comments, questions, confusions, all of it. Also let me know if there are typos. I'm quite sure there are typos.
> 
> xoxo,  
> Vi


	5. Chapter 5

“I’ve got something for you,” Merlin announced. The men had left early in the morning, hunting and gathering in this lush woodland to prepare for the more barren days ahead, but it seems Merlin was already back.

Gwen startled out of her reverie. She had been trying to remember how many days it had been since Elyan had eaten three square meals. Twelve? Fifteen? He hadn’t touched the crusts of bread and cheese she had bought from the men. Although she thought he was awake, his eyes were closed, his breathing shallow.

She turned and opened her mouth to reply, but it would appear Merlin had been talking to her brother. He leaned over Elyan’s cart, brought a hand to his chest and then to his cheek, and studied his brow closely.

“How is your head today, Elyan?” the young man asked. Gwen again opened her mouth to reply, but then forced herself silent. She was so used to protecting him, but she couldn’t speak for him forever. 

Elyan hummed low in his chest, before exhaling a brief, tense syllable: “Hurts.”

The raw, scraped pain in her little brother’s voice made Gwen want to cry, or perhaps throw something. She turned her face away from the cart in case her brother fluttered his eyes open and caught a glimpse of the tears she quickly rubbed away. Merlin, however, looked calm and steady. He reached into his sack and produced a handful of thin, feathery herbs. He looked down at them as happy as she had ever seen him. 

He held the bunch under Elyan’s nose.

“Do these smell good to you?”

“Yes,” Elyan creaked.

“That’s very good news,” Merlin said, stripping the herbs off the stem in one fluid movement. “Here, eat these.”

Elyan’s lips tightened, and he said nothing.

Merlin met Gwen’s eyes. She scooted nearer. 

“Come on, you have to do it now,” Merlin said. “It’ll be no good if they wilt.”

Gwen placed her fingers on her brother’s brow, they way she had soothed him when he was a baby, or a small, motherless child coming to her with his nightmares.

“Elyan,” she said in her softest voice. “These are different. They will not make you feel ill. You need to trust him.”

Elyan peered up at her through mostly closed eyes. She sighed.

“Trust me,” she amended.

He gave the distinct grunt of the irritated-little-brother and opened his mouth for the herbs.

Merlin grinned up at her as he carefully placed half the herbs on Elyan’s tongue. The others he dropped into a small clay jar he produced out of his pack and began crushing them into a poultice.

“So why do you seek Camelot? Your brother’s cure?” Merlin asked. He bent close over Elyan. 

“No, Elyan was only slightly ill when we fled. He became like this,” she said, motioning to her brother’s limp, sweat-shined form, “while we crossed the passes. We seek Camelot for the same reasons so many do. A promise of safety and freedom.”

She became aware, as she said it, how differently and more urgently Merlin would have a need for Camelot's promised freedom. She felt her face grow hot, but Merlin did not show any sign of discomfort. He began to carefully rub the herb salve on Elyan’s chest and neck.

“How did you learn healing arts?” Gwen asked. It might be her hopeful imagination, but it seemed Elyan’s breathing was already coming a little easier.

Merlin smiled the same tight smile as when he had been explaining the collar, so different from the wide and easy thing brought about by the gift of the blanket and the miracle of the herbs.

“Well I was raised in woods like these, and my mother taught me to forage and a few basic tricks for illnesses and injuries. But I learned this particular remedy,” he said, wiggling his fingers covered in crushed herbs, “as a medic in General Morgana’s army.”

“You were a medic?” Gwen asked. She watched his long fingers deftly scoop the last of the poultice on to Elyan’s breastbone. It made sense, Merlin as a healer. He had the right calming, capable aura. 

Merlin made an affirming noise, but the tension that had been so wonderfully absent these past few minutes had crept back into his shoulders.

“I’m sorry to pry,” Gwen said quickly. Perhaps she shouldn’t be apologizing to a slave, much less a probable war criminal, but her father had raised her to have respect for all. And Merlin’s face was actually contorted in pain.  
“It’s not that,” he said shortly. “The men are on their way back. They let me know.” He motioned to his collar with a slightly shaking finger.

Gwen felt a flutter of disgust at such casual cruelty, and another, deeper pang of shame that Deiran money was paying these kind of men. 

“I have to go,” Merlin said, gathering up his pack somewhat frantically. But he paused and bent his ear to listen at Elyan’s chest. 

“I think that’ll really help,” he said softly, almost to himself.

“Thank you,” Gwen said, trying to pack as much gratitude as she felt into those two syllables.

Merlin rewarded her with one of those real smiles, that crinkled his eyes and transformed his whole face, before turning and jogging over to the camp to meet his masters.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys. Hi. I started this fic over a year ago. I have decided to return, entirely bc there were some very nice comments and I wanted to give those very nice people some resolution. And I really liked the characters and premise and it was just my perfectionism that was holding me back. So I'm gonna do it. Ima follow through. Or I'll try anyway.
> 
> Here's the next chapter. Feel free to hound me until I finish. 
> 
> <3

They traveled for ten days, and each day Elyan improved a bit more. He still spent most of the time sleeping in the cart, but his brow was less lined, his breathing deeper, and his waking moments more lucid.

Gwen was positive all of that was due to Merlin. He spent every moment he was free of the soldiers’ duties, and some he probably wasn’t, bringing Elyan poultices and compresses and broths he seemed to pull out of thin air.

Gwen didn’t know what to do with her gratitude, besides calculate how she could sneak Merlin some of the riches she had promised the soldiers. The days were getting colder, but she felt warmer and brighter than she had in weeks. She mostly kept away from the other men, only speaking to them when she exchanged coins for food or blankets. But Merlin, she quickly found, was a quietly witty and unfailingly kind travel partner. He listened with amusement to all her stories about life back at the Deiran court, and often made quips that had even Elyan grunting a laugh. It made it even more difficult to watch when without warning his face would twist and he would bite his lip or let out a hiss, the collar being activated as a cue for him to tend to one of his former enemy’s needs. 

Once he came to Elyan’s cart with a new bundle of herbs hidden under his shirt and a brilliant bruise on his cheekbone. 

“Didn’t get Leon’s laundry done in time,” he said too lightly at Gwen’s horrified expression. “But it was worth it, this variety is really rare and only grows by the river.”

“You don’t have to do this,” she said quietly, unable to look away from Merlin’s swollen face.

He paused and looked away, carefully plucking the tender leaves of the stems. 

“I’ll stop if you want me to,” he said, but his voice was hollow, wooden, all wrong: it was the tone of voice he used to speak to the soldiers, not the voice of her friend. 

“Of course I don’t want you to,” Gwen said, and her voice quaked under the strain of the months of frustration and worry. She took a moment to compose herself. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. Please, please, be more careful.”

Merlin gave her look that indicated he was holding back a sardonic laugh because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Typical Merlin, worrying about offending her when he had a massive bruise threatening to take over his face. 

“It’s a little late to avoid being hurt,” he muttered, and some bitterness did sneak into his voice. He plucked the leaves with quite a bit more force than necessary. They sat in an uneasy silence for a while, as Merlin removed the rest of the herbs and stuffed them into a pouch for later use. 

“I used to help people all the time,” he said at last. His voice was hoarse and immensely tired. “I’d close over their wounds, pull infection out of gashes, bring people in and out of a perfect sleep. Now all I can do is pick plants and take a beating.” He bit the inside of his lip and met her eyes for the first time. The pale blue of his eyes glistened above the mottled purple. “In the old days, I could have healed him in a day. But I can still do it. I can.”

“I know,” Gwen said without hesitation. “You’re already doing it. Merlin…” The rest of her sentence was caught behind the lump in her throat, but when Merlin reached over and gently squeezed her hand she thought he understood the depth of her agonizing gratitude.

“How long was he awake today?” he asked abruptly, scooting over to look over Elyan and giving her a moment to rub at her eyes.

“Two hours in the middle of the day, and another hour in late afternoon,” Gwen responded immediately. “He ate the bread and half the cheese you left for him. I woke him up to drink water five times. He spoke in clear sentences when he was awake, although he still has trouble keeping himself upright without help.”

Merlin grinned at her. “You would make a very good healer, Gwen. Or maybe an apothecarist. You’re good with the details.”

She smiled and shrugged. “My father would be glad to hear you say that. He always taught us to be precise and observant. He said kingdoms collapse when kings stop paying attention for even a moment.”

“Well it’s certainly helped you this far,” Merlin said, watching Elyan’s sleeping form. He turned and let out a slight groan as he stiffly tried to get to his feet, and Gwen suddenly realized that the bruising wasn’t limited to his cheek, that his long sleeves and pants could hide a lot.

“You stay seated,” she commanded and Merlin looked up in surprise and stopped his struggle to stand. She didn’t often use what Elyan had dubbled her “Regal Royal Voice,” and she had forgotten how effective it was in getting people to do what they were told. 

“I’ll make dinner tonight,” she announced. “And if any of these herbs are of any use to you and your own body, then you better take them right now. I can’t have the best healer in this land getting infected.” She continued, in her normal tone “because I really, really need him.”

Merlin’s smile was the very definition of warmth, even as he sank back into the ground and reached for one of his own poultices. 

Gwen gave him some privacy to tend to his wounds while she made dinner. She brought it to the soldiers and thanked the stars that they were scattered into the woods just then, so that she didn’t have to talk to them. She wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t going to give Leon some blows to match Merlin’s.

When she returned to the fire it was to the impossibly beautiful sound of Merlin and Elyan conversing. Elyan’s throaty voice carried through the night and Merlin chuckled, probably at one of her brother’s trademark stupid jokes. When they turned to her and smiled as one, with Merlin handing Gwen her portion of stew, she gave thanks to the universe for blessing her with not one but two brothers to travel with, together.


End file.
